June 20, 2013

Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle.

The distrust of our government is unreasonably endemic. Would the Administration really order the liquidation of a troublesome journalist? No, of course not. Team Obama, like Team Bush before it, is composed of only stand-up guys. Bros, even... every single one of 'em. It is treasonous to suggest otherwise. Treason!

I can readily imagine how the government would want to kill a man who deep-six'd the career of a man who was a thorn in their paw.

I agree that President Obama relished the chance to be rid of McChrystal. Even though Obama appointed him, he quickly found out Special Forces guys aren't big on the whole "deference to authority" thing. When Hasting's article came out, it gave Obama the perfect opportunity to cycle McChrystal out and replace him in the Afghanistan quagmire with Petraeus, fresh off "victory" in Iraq and already being mentioned as a Presidential contender at that point. When Afghanistan failed to besmirch Petraeus, and he was getting bucky about Benghazi, Obama had to resort to shady FBI email tapping.

But the NSA article Hastings was working on, "Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans", on the other hand, could have been embarrassing ...

The current conspiracy theory that I'm working on with one of my colleagues is that the combination of Wes Welker's departure to Denver, Gronk's back surgery, the dead man in Aaron Hernandez's neighborhood, and the man in Miami with the travelling bullet in the arm all comes down to Tim Tebow. Tebow is the linchpin. A car crash in Los Angeles? I wonder if Frank McCourt can account for his wherabouts.

How about I throw a conspiracy truth onto the conflagration? I think it is safe enough to do so here, since only geeks will know what I'm talking about:

Anonymous communication and payment networks are going down at the U.S. gvmnt's direction.

Banks will block all bitcoin business. It happened to Mt. Gox today; others recently; more in the future.

Tor relays will be disabled by DoS. Those in the cloud are in the process of being imaged and monitored. Same with two other networks: IxP and Fxnet.

I know this because I have inside information. If these things aren't gone in 90 days, I'll eat my laurel diadem.

Once Treasury set their eyes on bitcoin, that was it's death knell. Similarly and I do know what you are talking about, the IRS, I believe just issues an imperative that if you buy or sell virtual property via bitcoin or some other virtual currency that you will be subject to that tax as income.

It is amusing that the Left is now the ones that fear their Black Messiah is evil - along with the liberal and progressive Jewish led mainstream media - now getting chills that the State security apparatus under Obama appears to be going all Putin against investigative mainstream media journalists that are considered dangers. Dangers to the power of The One, and his designated successor Medevev..oops...meant Hillary.

As for Hastings, I can't say I am in mourning because the little shit is well understood to have broken his confidentiality agreement on off the record communications with Gen Stanley McCrystal and from that..burned local Afghan sources McCrystal had as a prime reason why certain conversations were not to be made public.What Hastings did actually cost him creds with fellow journalists and made him a bit of an outcast for betraying confidential sources and violating his agreements with his on record sources.He died? It's really unlikely that people under Obama killed him, for starters. And his loss to journalism is about as troubling as the Army "losing" Bradley Manning fom active duty.

McChrystal didn't exactly cover himself in glory when he awarded a Silver Star to Pat Tillman despite knowing Tillman had died from friendly fire. That's what he should have lost his job over, not over making fun of Joe Biden (if any Silver Stars were to be given out he should have gotten one for that).

There are fewer and fewer reporters like him, and more brainless bloggers in his place. I like this quote about him: "He was unapologetically an outsider, willing to break the rules of access journalism to bring his readers something close to the truth. This uncompromising approach was evident not only in his reporting on McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, but also in his ebook on the 2012 Presidential election, “Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama’s Final Campaign,” in which he deliberately broke ranks with his fellow reporters to shed just a sliver of light on a tightly controlled political operation."

Like the Chechen that the FBI agent shot and killed while under interrogation, where the story kept changing and you had to ask, "WTF?"

When you have a government that has proven itself no longer trustworthy, then you have suspicion and conspiracy theories when things like this happen to people who might have offended the regime. It's the kind of stuff that happens in Russia, where regime opponents die of odd, unlikely poisonings and such.

"As for Hastings, I can't say I am in mourning because the little shit is well understood to have broken his confidentiality agreement on off the record communications with Gen Stanley McCrystal...."

How do you know he had a confidentiality agreement with McCrystal? Why do you (or anyone) presume Hastings should have agreed to keep certain things "off the record?" That's not really informing the public, is it?

What really caused (some) other journalists to dis Hastings was their own cowardice and complicity with those in power in the military and in government. These journalists are slavish stenographers for the powerful, propagating the tailored spin those in power want us to hear, and nothing more.

Hastings shamed them.

I'm inclined at present to accept this was an accident, unless evidence to the contrary is found, but I won't be surprised at all if it turns out this was a hit, and I think others should look very hard to see if there's any evidence to support this possibility.

How do you know he had a confidentiality agreement with McCrystal? Why do you (or anyone) presume Hastings should have agreed to keep certain things "off the record?" That's not really informing the public, is it?

Reporters are only useful for "informing the public" if you can trust them to be honest. That is why it is important that reporters honor whatever agreements they make with their sources. If I want to listen to people who will lie to get what they want I don't need reporters -- I can just listen to politicians' press conferences. :)

As to whether or not Hastings made such an agreement and then broke it, I have no idea. My gut feeling is that he did, if only because I can't picture his subject actually being so open otherwise.

He contacted WikiLeaks with his cell phone which was tracked by the NSA which notified Holder who sent an FBI Putin squad to send him home. All so clean with no finger prints. Message sent, leaks plugged, poodle press wags its tail, licks the master's jet boots clean.

Maybe he wanted to disappear before he dumped a load onto wikileaks so he faked his own death. It is kind of strange that his car burnt so thoroughly that the corpse was completely unidentifiable and this happened right before he was to meet with wikileaks and right after writing the article about why dems like to spy on USA citizens.

""As to whether or not Hastings made such an agreement and then broke it, I have no idea. My gut feeling is that he did, if only because I can't picture his subject actually being so open otherwise."

So you're condemning Hastings' journalistic integrity for "breaking a confidentiality agreement" that you don't know had even been made, but which your "gut feeling" tells you had to have been in effect.

In other words, you're just making up shit.

It's fine if you take issue with Hastings' decision to print things he heard and saw that you think he shouldn't have, but you can't condemn him for breaching a confidentiality agreement that you have no evidence even existed.

I saw a dash cam video of him blowing through an intersection at a very high rate of speed against a red light. Nobody came through ahead of him so he wasn't chasing anyone, and nobody came through after him so nobody was chasing him.

A witness at a subsequent intersection said he was going so fast the car went airborne when it hit the crown of the cross street.

He was blowing through red lights as if they weren't there, almost like he was playing a game of russian roulette with a car and intersections.

If the government were "out to get him", you would think they would have done that a long time ago. He didn't have anything to do with Snowden so that wouldn't be a factor here. This is just people linking unrelated events in their own heads, in my opinion. He was just driving like a maniac and got killed.